30980393 My Pedagogic Creed

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My pedagogic creed - John Dewey

My Pedagogic Creed

by John Dewey

School Journal vol. 54 (January 1897), pp. 77-80

ARTICLE ONE. WHAT EDUCATION IS

I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of theindividual in the social consciousness of the race. This process begins

unconsciously almost at birth, and is continually shaping the individual's

powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas,

and arousing his feelings and emotions. Through this unconscious educationthe individual gradually comes to share in the intellectual and moral

resources which humanity has succeeded in getting together. He becomes aninheritor of the funded capital of civilization. The most formal and technical

education in the world cannot safely depart from this general process. It can

only organize it; or differentiate it in some particular direction.

I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of

the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds

himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a

unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and to

conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to

which he belongs. Through the responses which others make to his ownactivities he comes to know what these mean in social terms. The value which

they have is reflected back into them. For instance, through the response

which is made to the child's instinctive babblings the child comes to know

what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language

and thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas and

emotions which are now summed up in language.I believe that this educational process has two sides - one psychological

and one sociological; and that neither can be subordinated to the other or

neglected without evil results following. Of these two sides, thepsychological is the basis. The child's own instincts and powers furnish thematerial and give the starting point for all education. Save as the efforts of

the educator connect with some activity which the child is carrying on of his

own initiative independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a

pressure from without. It may, indeed, give certain external results but

cannot truly be called educative. Without insight into the psychological


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structure and activities of the individual, the educative process will,

therefore, be haphazard and arbitrary. If it chances to coincide with the

child's activity it will get a leverage; if it does not, it will result in friction,

or disintegration, or arrest of the child nature.

I believe that knowledge of social conditions, of the present state ofcivilization, is necessary in order properly to interpret the child's powers.

The child has his own instincts and tendencies, but we do not know what

these mean until we can translate them into their social equivalents. We

must be able to carry them back into a social past and see them as the

inheritance of previous race activities. We must also be able to project them

into the future to see what their outcome and end will be. In the illustration

just used, it is the ability to see in the child's babblings the promise and

potency of a future social intercourse and conversation which enables one to

deal in the proper way with that instinct.I believe that the psychological and social sides are organically related

and that education cannot be regarded as a compromise between the two, or

a superimposition of one upon the other. We are told that the psychological

definition of education is barren and formal - that it gives us only the idea

of a development of all the mental powers without giving us any idea of the

use to which these powers are put. On the other hand, it is urged that the

social definition of education, as getting adjusted to civilization, makes of it

a forced and external process, and results in subordinating the freedom of

the individual to a preconceived social and political status.

I believe each of these objections is true when urged against one side

isolated from the other. In order to know what a power really is we must

know what its end, use, or function is; and this we cannot know save as we

conceive of the individual as active in social relationships. But, on the other

hand, the only possible adjustment which we can give to the child under

existing conditions, is that which arises through putting him in complete

possession of all his powers. With the advent of democracy and modern

industrial conditions, it is impossible to foretell definitely just what

civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare

the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the futurelife means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he

will have the full and ready use of all his capacities; that his eye and ear and

hand may be tools ready to command, that his judgment may be capable of

grasping the conditions under which it has to work, and the executive forces

be trained to act economically and efficiently. It is impossible to reach this


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sort of adjustment save as constant regard is had to the individual's own

powers, tastes, and interests - say, that is, as education is continually

converted into psychological terms. In sum, I believe that the individual who

is to be educated is a social individual and that society is an organic union of

individuals. If we eliminate the social factor from the child we are left onlywith an abstraction; if we eliminate the individual factor from society, we

are left only with an inert and lifeless mass. Education, therefore, must

begin with a psychological insight into the child's capacities, interests, and

habits. It must be controlled at every point by reference to these same

considerations. These powers, interests, and habits must be continually

interpreted - we must know what they mean. They must be translated into

terms of their social equivalents - into terms of what they are capable of in

the way of social service.

ARTICLE TWO. WHAT THE SCHOOL ISI believe that the school is primarily a social institution. Education being

a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all

those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the

child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own

powers for social ends.

I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a

preparation for future living.

I believe that the school must represent present life - life as real and

vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the

neighborhood, or on the play-ground.

I believe that education which does not occur through forms of life,

forms that are worth living for their own sake, is always a poor substitute

for the genuine reality and tends to cramp and to deaden.

I believe that the school, as an institution, should simplify existing

social life; should reduce it, as it were, to an embryonic form. Existing life is

so complex that the child cannot be brought into contact with it without

either confusion or distraction; he is either overwhelmed by multiplicity of

activities which are going on, so that he loses his own power of orderly

reaction, or he is so stimulated by these various activities that his powersare prematurely called into play and he becomes either unduly specialized or

else disintegrated.

I believe that, as such simplified social life, the school life should grow

gradually out of the home life; that it should take up and continue the

activities with which the child is already familiar in the home.


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I believe that it should exhibit these activities to the child, and

reproduce them in such ways that the child will gradually learn the meaning

of them, and be capable of playing his own part in relation to them.

I believe that this is a psychological necessity, because it is the only

way of securing continuity in the child's growth, the only way of giving abackground of past experience to the new ideas given in school.

I believe it is also a social necessity because the home is the form of

social life in which the child has been nurtured and in connection with which

he has had his moral training. It is the business of the school to deepen and

extend his sense of the values bound up in his home life.

I believe that much of present education fails because it neglects this

fundamental principle of the school as a form of community life. It conceives

the school as a place where certain information is to be given, where certain

lessons are to be learned, or where certain habits are to be formed. Thevalue of these is conceived as lying largely in the remote future; the child

must do these things for the sake of something else he is to do; they are

mere preparation. As a result they do not become a part of the life

experience of the child and so are not truly educative.

I believe that moral education centres about this conception of the

school as a mode of social life, that the best and deepest moral training is

precisely that which one gets through having to enter into proper relations

with others in a unity of work and thought. The present educational systems,

so far as they destroy or neglect this unity, render it difficult or impossible

to get any genuine, regular moral training.

I believe that the child should be stimulated and controlled in his work

through the life of the community.

I believe that under existing conditions far too much of the stimulus

and control proceeds from the teacher, because of neglect of the idea of

the school as a form of social life.

I believe that the teacher's place and work in the school is to be

interpreted from this same basis. The teacher is not in the school to impose

certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member

of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and toassist him in properly responding to these influences.

I believe that the discipline of the school should proceed from the life

of the school as a whole and not directly from the teacher.


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I believe that the teacher's business is simply to determine on the basis

of larger experience and riper wisdom, how the discipline of life shall come

to the child.

I believe that all questions of the grading of the child and his promotion

should be determined by reference to the same standard. Examinations areof use only so far as they test the child's fitness for social life and reveal

the place in which he can be of most service and where he can receive the

most help.

ARTICLE THREE. THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF EDUCATION

I believe that the social life of the child is the basis of concentration,

or correlation, in all his training or growth. The social life gives the

unconscious unity and the background of all his efforts and of all his

attainments.

I believe that the subject-matter of the school curriculum should marka gradual differentiation out of the primitive unconscious unity of social life.

I believe that we violate the child's nature and render difficult the

best ethical results, by introducing the child too abruptly to a number of

special studies, of reading, writing, geography, etc., out of relation to this

social life.

I believe, therefore, that the true centre of correlation of the school

subjects is not science, nor literature, nor history, nor geography, but the

child's own social activities.

I believe that education cannot be unified in the study of science, or so-

called nature study, because apart from human activity, nature itself is not a

unity; nature in itself is a number of diverse objects in space and time, and

to attempt to make it the centre of work by itself, is to introduce a principle

of radiation rather than one of concentration.

I believe that literature is the reflex expression and interpretation of

social experience; that hence it must follow upon and not precede such

experience. It, therefore, cannot be made the basis, although it may be

made the summary of unification.

I believe once more that history is of educative value in so far as itpresents phases of social life and growth. It must be controlled by

reference to social life. When taken simply as history it is thrown into the

distant past and becomes dead and inert. Taken as the record of man's

social life and progress it becomes full of meaning. I believe, however, that


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it cannot be so taken excepting as the child is also introduced directly into

social life.

I believe accordingly that the primary basis of education is in the

child's powers at work along the same general constructive lines as those

which have brought civilization into being.I believe that the only way to make the child conscious of his social

heritage is to enable him to perform those fundamental types of activity

which makes civilization what it is.

I believe, therefore, in the so-called expressive or constructive

activities as the centre of correlation.

I believe that this gives the standard for the place of cooking, sewing,

manual training, etc., in the school.

I believe that they are not special studies which are to be introduced

over and above a lot of others in the way of relaxation or relief, or asadditional accomplishments. I believe rather that they represent, as types,

fundamental forms of social activity; and that it is possible and desirable

that the child's introduction into the more formal subjects of the

curriculum be through the medium of these activities.

I believe that the study of science is educational in so far as it brings

out the materials and processes which make social life what it is.

I believe that one of the greatest difficulties in the present teaching

of science is that the material is presented in purely objective form, or is

treated as a new peculiar kind of experience which the child can add to that

which he has already had. In reality, science is of value because it gives the

ability to interpret and control the experience already had. It should be

introduced, not as so much new subject- matter, but as showing the factors

already involved in previous experience and as furnishing tools by which that

experience can be more easily and effectively regulated.

I believe that at present we lose much of the value of literature and

language studies because of our elimination of the social element. Language

is almost always treated in the books of pedagogy simply as the expression

of thought. It is true that language is a logical instrument, but it is

fundamentally and primarily a social instrument. Language is the device forcommunication; it is the tool through which one individual comes to share the

ideas and feelings of others. When treated simply as a way of getting

individual information, or as a means of showing off what one has learned, it

loses its social motive and end.


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I believe that there is, therefore, no succession of studies in the ideal

school curriculum. If education is life, all life has, from the outset, a

scientific aspect; an aspect of art and culture and an aspect of

communication. It cannot, therefore, be true that the proper studies for one

grade are mere reading and writing, and that at a later grade, reading, orliterature, or science, may be introduced. The progress is not in the

succession of studies but in the development of new attitudes towards, and

new interests in, experience.

I believe finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing

reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are

one and the same thing.

I believe that to set up any end outside of education, as furnishing its

goal and standard, is to deprive the educational process of much of its

meaning and tends to make us rely upon false and external stimuli in dealingwith the child.

ARTICLE FOUR. THE NATURE OF METHOD

I believe that the question of method is ultimately reducible to the

question of the order of development of the child's powers and interests.

The law for presenting and treating material is the law implicit within the

child's own nature. Because this is so I believe the following statements are

of supreme importance as determining the spirit in which education is

carried on:

1. I believe that the active side precedes the passive in the development

of the child nature; that expression comes before conscious impression; that

the muscular development precedes the sensory; that movements come

before conscious sensations; I believe that consciousness is essentially

motor or impulsive; that conscious states tend to project themselves in

action.

I believe that the neglect of this principle is the cause of a large part

of the waste of time and strength in school work. The child is thrown into a

passive, receptive or absorbing attitude. The conditions are such that he is

not permitted to follow the law of his nature; the result is friction and

waste.I believe that ideas (intellectual and rational processes) also result from

action and devolve for the sake of the better control of action. What we

term reason is primarily the law of orderly or effective action. To attempt

to develop the reasoning powers, the powers of judgment, without reference

to the selection and arrangement of means in action, is the fundamental


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fallacy in our present methods of dealing with this matter. As a result we

present the child with arbitrary symbols. Symbols are a necessity in mental

development, but they have their place as tools for economizing effort;

presented by themselves they are a mass of meaningless and arbitrary ideas

imposed from without.2. I believe that the image is the great instrument of instruction. What

a child gets out of any subject presented to him is simply the images which

he himself forms with regard to it.

I believe that if nine-tenths of the energy at present directed towards

making the child learn certain things, were spent in seeing to it that the

child was forming proper images, the work of instruction would be

indefinitely facilitated.

I believe that much of the time and attention now given to the

preparation and presentation of lessons might be more wisely and profitablyexpended in training the child's power of imagery and in seeing to it that he

was continually forming definite, vivid, and growing images of the various

subjects with which he comes in contact in his experience.

3. I believe that interests are the signs and symptoms of growing power.

I believe that they represent dawning capacities. Accordingly the constant

and careful observation of interests is of the utmost importance for the

educator.

I believe that these interests are to be observed as showing the state

of development which the child has reached.

I believe that the prophesy the stage upon which he is about to enter.

I believe that only through the continual and sympathetic observation of

childhood's interests can the adult enter into the child's life and see what it

is ready for, and upon what material it could work most readily and

fruitfully.

I believe that these interests are neither to be humored nor repressed.

To repress interest is to substitute the adult for the child, and so to weaken

intellectual curiosity and alertness, to suppress initiative, and to deaden

interest. To humor the interests is to substitute the transient for the

permanent. The interest is always the sign of some power below; theimportant thing is to discover this power. To humor the interest is to fail to

penetrate below the surface and its sure result is to substitute caprice and

whim for genuine interest.

4. I believe that the emotions are the reflex of actions.


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I believe that to endeavor to stimulate or arouse the emotions apart

from their corresponding activities, is to introduce an unhealthy and morbid

state of mind.

I believe that if we can only secure right habits of action and thought,

with reference to the good, the true, and the beautiful, the emotions willfor the most part take care of themselves.

I believe that next to deadness and dullness, formalism and routine, our

education is threatened with no greater evil than sentimentalism.

I believe that this sentimentalism is the necessary result of the

attempt to divorce feeling from action.

ARTICLE FIVE. THE SCHOOL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS

I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress

and reform.

I believe that all reforms which rest simply upon the enactment of law,or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or

outward arrangements, are transitory and futile.

I believe that education is a regulation of the process of coming to

share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual

activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of

social reconstruction.

I believe that this conception has due regard for both the

individualistic and socialistic ideals. It is duly individual because it

recognizes the formation of a certain character as the only genuine basis of

right living. It is socialistic because it recognizes that this right character is

not to be formed by merely individual precept, example, or exhortation, but

rather by the influence of a certain form of institutional or community life

upon the individual, and that the social organism through the school, as its

organ, may determine ethical results.

I believe that in the ideal school we have the reconciliation of the

individualistic and the institutional ideals.

I believe that the community's duty to education is, therefore, its

paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and

discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazardand chance way. But through education society can formulate its own

purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself

with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.

I believe that when society once recognizes the possibilities in this

direction, and the obligations which these possibilities impose, it is


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impossible to conceive of the resources of time, attention, and money which

will be put at the disposal of the educator.

I believe it is the business of every one interested in education to insist

upon the school as the primary and most effective instrument of social

progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize whatthe school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the

educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task.

I believe that education thus conceived marks the most perfect and

intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience.

I believe that the art of thus giving shape to human powers and

adapting them to social service, is the supreme art; one calling into its

service the best of artists; that no insight, sympathy, tact, executive power

is too great for such service.

I believe that with the growth of psychological science, giving addedinsight into individual structure and laws of growth; and with growth of

social science, adding to our knowledge of the right organization of

individuals, all scientific resources can be utilized for the purposes of

education.

I believe that when science and art thus join hands the most

commanding motive for human action will be reached; the most genuine

springs of human conduct aroused and the best service that human nature is

capable of guaranteed.

I believe, finally, that the teacher is engaged, not simply in the training

of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life.

I believe that every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling;

that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social

order and the securing of the right social growth.

I believe that in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the true

God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God.


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John Dewey - Internet Encyclopedia of Psychology

John Dewey (18591952)

John Dewey was a leading proponent of the American school of

thought known as pragmatism, a view that rejected the dualisticepistemology and metaphysics of modern philosophy in favor of a naturalistic

approach that viewed knowledge as arising from an active adaptation of the

human organism to its environment. On this view, inquiry should not be

understood as consisting of a mind passively observing the world and drawing

from this ideas that if true correspond to reality, but rather as a process

which initiates with a check or obstacle to successful human action,

proceeds to active manipulation of the environment to test hypotheses, and

issues in a re-adaptation of organism to environment that allows once again

for human action to proceed. With this view as his starting point, Deweydeveloped a broad body of work encompassing virtually all of the main areas

of philosophical concern in his day. He also wrote extensively on social issues

in such popular publications as the New Republic, thereby gaining a

reputation as a leading social commentator of his time.

Table of Contents

1. Life and Works

2. Theory of Knowledge

3. Metaphysics

4. Ethical and Social Theory

5. Aesthetics

6. Critical Reception and Influence

7. References and Further Reading

1. Primary Sources

2. Secondary Sources

1. Life and Works

John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859, the third of four sons born toArchibald Sprague Dewey and Lucina Artemesia Rich of Burlington, Vermont.

The eldest sibling died in infancy, but the three surviving brothers attended

the public school and the University of Vermont in Burlington with John.

While at the University of Vermont, Dewey was exposed to evolutionary

theory through the teaching of G.H. Perkins and Lessons in Elementary


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Physiology, a text by T.H. Huxley, the famous English evolutionist. The

theory of natural selection continued to have a life-long impact upon Deweys

thought, suggesting the barrenness of static models of nature, and the

importance of focusing on the interaction between the human organism and

its environment when considering questions of psychology and the theory ofknowledge. The formal teaching in philosophy at the University of Vermont

was confined for the most part to the school of Scottish realism, a school of

thought that Dewey soon rejected, but his close contact both before and

after graduation with his teacher of philosophy, H.A.P. Torrey, a learned

scholar with broader philosophical interests and sympathies, was later

accounted by Dewey himself as decisive to his philosophical development.

After graduation in 1879, Dewey taught high school for two years, during

which the idea of pursuing a career in philosophy took hold. With this

nascent ambition in mind, he sent a philosophical essay to W.T. Harris, theneditor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and the most prominent of

the St. Louis Hegelians. Harriss acceptance of the essay gave Dewey the

confirmation he needed of his promise as a philosopher. With this

encouragement he traveled to Baltimore to enroll as a graduate student at

Johns Hopkins University.

At Johns Hopkins Dewey came under the tutelage of two powerful and

engaging intellects who were to have a lasting influence on him. George

Sylvester Morris, a German-trained Hegelian philosopher, exposed Dewey to

the organic model of nature characteristic of German idealism. G. Stanley

Hall, one of the most prominent American experimental psychologists at the

time, provided Dewey with an appreciation of the power of scientific

methodology as applied to the human sciences. The confluence of these

viewpoints propelled Deweys early thought, and established the general

tenor of his ideas throughout his philosophical career.

Upon obtaining his doctorate in 1884, Dewey accepted a teaching post at the

University of Michigan, a post he was to hold for ten years, with the

exception of a year at the University of Minnesota in 1888. While at

Michigan Dewey wrote his first two books: Psychology (1887), and Leibnizs

New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding (1888). Both worksexpressed Deweys early commitment to Hegelian idealism, while the

Psychology explored the synthesis between this idealism and experimental

science that Dewey was then attempting to effect. At Michigan Dewey also

met one of his important philosophical collaborators, James Hayden Tufts,

with whom he would later author Ethics (1908; revised ed. 1932).


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In 1894, Dewey followed Tufts to the recently founded University of

Chicago. It was during his years at Chicago that Deweys early idealism gave

way to an empirically based theory of knowledge that was in concert with the

then developing American school of thought known as pragmatism. This

change in view finally coalesced into a series of four essays entitledcollectively Thought and its Subject-Matter, which was published along

with a number of other essays by Deweys colleagues and students at

Chicago under the title Studies in Logical Theory (1903). Dewey also founded

and directed a laboratory school at Chicago, where he was afforded an

opportunity to apply directly his developing ideas on pedagogical method.

This experience provided the material for his first major work on education,

The School and Society (1899).

Disagreements with the administration over the status of the

Laboratory School led to Deweys resignation from his post at Chicago in1904. His philosophical reputation now secured, he was quickly invited to join

the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University. Dewey spent the rest

of his professional life at Columbia. Now in New York, located in the midst of

the Northeastern universities that housed many of the brightest minds of

American philosophy, Dewey developed close contacts with many

philosophers working from divergent points of view, an intellectually

stimulating atmosphere which served to nurture and enrich his thought.

During his first decade at Columbia Dewey wrote a great number of articles

in the theory of knowledge and metaphysics, many of which were published in

two important books: The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other

Essays in Contemporary Thought (1910) and Essays in Experimental

Logic(1916). His interest in educational theory also continued during these

years, fostered by his work at Teachers College at Columbia. This led to the

publication of How We Think (1910; revised ed. 1933), an application of his

theory of knowledge to education, and Democracy and Education (1916),

perhaps his most important work in the field.

During his years at Columbia Deweys reputation grew not only as a

leading philosopher and educational theorist, but also in the public mind as an

important commentator on contemporary issues, the latter due to hisfrequent contributions to popular magazines such as The New Republic and

Nation, as well as his ongoing political involvement in a variety of causes,

such as womens suffrage and the unionization of teachers. One outcome of

this fame was numerous invitations to lecture in both academic and popular

venues. Many of his most significant writings during these years were the


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result of such lectures, includingReconstruction in Philosophy (1920), Human

Nature and Conduct (1922), Experience and Nature(1925), The Public and its

Problems (1927), and The Quest for Certainty (1929).

Deweys retirement from active teaching in 1930 did not curtail his

activity either as a public figure or productive philosopher. Of special note inhis public life was his participation in the Commission of Inquiry into the

Charges Against Leon Trotsky at the Moscow Trial, which exposed Stalins

political machinations behind the Moscow trials of the mid-1930s, and his

defense of fellow philosopher Bertrand Russell against an attempt by

conservatives to remove him from his chair at the College of the City of New

York in 1940. A primary focus of Deweys philosophical pursuits during the

1930s was the preparation of a final formulation of his logical theory,

published as Logic: The Theory of Inquiry in 1938. Deweys other significant

works during his retirement years include Art as Experience (1934), ACommon Faith(1934), Freedom and Culture (1939), Theory of Valuation

(1939), and Knowing and the Known(1949), the last coauthored with Arthur F.

Bentley. Dewey continued to work vigorously throughout his retirement until

his death on June 2, 1952, at the age of ninety-two.

2. Theory of Knowledge

The central focus of Deweys philosophical interests throughout his career

was what has been traditionally called epistemology, or the theory of

knowledge. It is indicative, however, of Deweys critical stance toward past

efforts in this area that he expressly rejected the term epistemology,

preferring the theory of inquiry or experimental logic as more

representative of his own approach.

In Deweys view, traditional epistemologies, whether rationalist or

empiricist, had drawn too stark a distinction between thought, the domain of

knowledge, and the world of fact to which thought purportedly referred:

thought was believed to exist apart from the world, epistemically as the

object of immediate awareness, ontologically as the unique aspect of the

self. The commitment of modern rationalism, stemming from Descartes, to a

doctrine of innate ideas, ideas constituted from birth in the very nature of

the mind itself, had effected this dichotomy; but the modern empiricists,beginning with Locke, had done the same just as markedly by their

commitment to an introspective methodology and a representational theory

of ideas. The resulting view makes a mystery of the relevance of thought to

the world: if thought constitutes a domain that stands apart from the world,

how can its accuracy as an account of the world ever be established? For


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Dewey a new model, rejecting traditional presumptions, was wanting, a model

that Dewey endeavored to develop and refine throughout his years of

writing and reflection.

In his early writings on these issues, such as Is Logic a Dualistic

Science? (1890) and The Present Position of Logical Theory (1891), Deweyoffered a solution to epistemological issues mainly along the lines of his early

acceptance of Hegelian idealism: the world of fact does not stand apart

from thought, but is itself defined within thought as its objective

manifestation. But during the succeeding decade Dewey gradually came to

reject this solution as confused and inadequate.

A number of influences have bearing on Deweys change of view. For

one, Hegelian idealism was not conducive to accommodating the

methodologies and results of experimental science which he accepted and

admired. Dewey himself had attempted to effect such an accommodationbetween experimental psychology and idealism in his early Psychology (1887),

but the publication of William James Principles of Psychology (1891), written

from a more thoroughgoing naturalistic stance, suggested the superfluity of

idealist principles in the treatment of the subject.

Second, Darwins theory of natural selection suggested in a more

particular way the form which a naturalistic approach to the theory of

knowledge should take. Darwins theory had renounced supernatural

explanations of the origins of species by accounting for the morphology of

living organisms as a product of a natural, temporal process of the

adaptation of lineages of organisms to their environments, environments

which, Darwin understood, were significantly determined by the organisms

that occupied them. The key to the naturalistic account of species was a

consideration of the complex interrelationships between organisms and

environments. In a similar way, Dewey came to believe that a productive,

naturalistic approach to the theory of knowledge must begin with a

consideration of the development of knowledge as an adaptive human

response to environing conditions aimed at an active restructuring of these

conditions. Unlike traditional approaches in the theory of knowledge, which

saw thought as a subjective primitive out of which knowledge was composed,Deweys approach understood thought genetically, as the product of the

interaction between organism and environment, and knowledge as having

practical instrumentality in the guidance and control of that interaction.

Thus Dewey adopted the term instrumentalism as a descriptive appellation

for his new approach.


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Deweys first significant application of this new naturalistic

understanding was offered in his seminal article The Reflex Arc Concept in

Psychology (1896). In this article, Dewey argued that the dominant

conception of the reflex arc in the psychology of his day, which was thought

to begin with the passive stimulation of the organism, causing a conscious actof awareness eventuating in a response, was a carry-over of the old, and

errant, mind-body dualism. Dewey argued for an alternative view: the

organism interacts with the world through self-guided activity that

coordinates and integrates sensory and motor responses. The implication for

the theory of knowledge was clear: the world is not passively perceived and

thereby known; active manipulation of the environment is involved integrally

in the process of learning from the start.

Dewey first applied this interactive naturalism in an explicit manner to

the theory of knowledge in his four introductory essays in Studies in LogicalTheory. Dewey identified the view expressed in Studieswith the school of

pragmatism, crediting William James as its progenitor. James, for his part,

in an article appearing in the Psychological Bulletin, proclaimed the work as

the expression of a new school of thought, acknowledging its originality.

A detailed genetic analysis of the process of inquiry was Deweys signal

contribution to Studies. Dewey distinguished three phases of the process. It

begins with the problematic situation, a situation where instinctive or

habitual responses of the human organism to the environment are inadequate

for the continuation of ongoing activity in pursuit of the fulfillment of needs

and desires. Dewey stressed inStudies and subsequent writings that the

uncertainty of the problematic situation is not inherently cognitive, but

practical and existential. Cognitive elements enter into the process as a

response to precognitive maladjustment.

The second phase of the process involves the isolation of the data or

subject matter which defines the parameters within which the

reconstruction of the initiating situation must be addressed. In the third,

reflective phase of the process, the cognitive elements of inquiry (ideas,

suppositions, theories, etc.) are entertained as hypothetical solutions to the

originating impediment of the problematic situation, the implications ofwhich are pursued in the abstract. The final test of the adequacy of these

solutions comes with their employment in action. If a reconstruction of the

antecedent situation conducive to fluid activity is achieved, then the solution

no longer retains the character of the hypothetical that marks cognitive


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thought; rather, it becomes a part of the existential circumstances of

human life.

The error of modern epistemologists, as Dewey saw it, was that they

isolated the reflective stages of this process, and hypostatized the

elements of those stages (sensations, ideas, etc.) into pre-existingconstituents of a subjective mind in their search for an incorrigible

foundation of knowledge. For Dewey, the hypostatization was as groundless

as the search for incorrigibility was barren. Rejecting foundationalism,

Dewey accepted the fallibilism that was characteristic of the school of

pragmatism: the view that any proposition accepted as an item of knowledge

has this status only provisionally, contingent upon its adequacy in providing a

coherent understanding of the world as the basis for human action.

Dewey defended this general outline of the process of inquiry throughout

his long career, insisting that it was the only proper way to understand themeans by which we attain knowledge, whether it be the commonsense

knowledge that guides the ordinary affairs of our lives, or the sophisticated

knowledge arising from scientific inquiry. The latter is only distinguished

from the former by the precision of its methods for controlling data, and

the refinement of its hypotheses. In his writings in the theory of inquiry

subsequent to Studies, Dewey endeavored to develop and deepen

instrumentalism by considering a number of central issues of traditional

epistemology from its perspective, and responding to some of the more

trenchant criticisms of the view.

One traditional question that Dewey addressed in a series of essays

between 1906 and 1909 was that of the meaning of truth. Dewey at that

time considered the pragmatic theory of truth as central to the pragmatic

school of thought, and vigorously defended its viability. Both Dewey and

William James, in his book Pragmatism (1907), argued that the traditional

correspondence theory of truth, according to which the true idea is one that

agrees or corresponds to reality, only begs the question of what the

agreement or correspondence of idea with reality is. Dewey and James

maintained that an idea agrees with reality, and is therefore true, if and

only if it is successfully employed in human action in pursuit of human goalsand interests, that is, if it leads to the resolution of a problematic situation

in Deweys terms. The pragmatic theory of truth met with strong opposition

among its critics, perhaps most notably from the British logician and

philosopher Bertrand Russell. Dewey later began to suspect that the issues

surrounding the conditions of truth, as well as knowledge, were hopelessly


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obscured by the accretion of traditional, and in his view misguided, meanings

to the terms, resulting in confusing ambiguity. He later abandoned these

terms in favor of warranted assertiblity to describe the distinctive

property of ideas that results from successful inquiry.

One of the most important developments of his later writings in thetheory of knowledge was the application of the principles of instrumentalism

to the traditional conceptions and formal apparatus of logical theory. Dewey

made significant headway in this endeavor in his lengthy introduction to

Essays in Experimental Logic, but the project reached full fruition in Logic:

The Theory of Inquiry.

The basis of Deweys discussion in the Logic is the continuity of

intelligent inquiry with the adaptive responses of pre-human organisms to

their environments in circumstances that check efficient activity in the

fulfillment of organic needs. What is distinctive about intelligent inquiry isthat it is facilitated by the use of language, which allows, by its symbolic

meanings and implication relationships, the hypothetical rehearsal of

adaptive behaviors before their employment under actual, prevailing

conditions for the purpose of resolving problematic situations. Logical form,

the specialized subject matter of traditional logic, owes its genesis not to

rational intuition, as had often been assumed by logicians, but due to its

functional value in (1) managing factual evidence pertaining to the

problematic situation that elicits inquiry, and (2) controlling the procedures

involved in the conceptualized entertainment of hypothetical solutions. As

Dewey puts it, logical forms accrue to subject-matter when the latter is

subjected to controlled inquiry.

From this new perspective, Dewey reconsiders many of the topics of

traditional logic, such as the distinction between deductive and inductive

inference, propositional form, and the nature of logical necessity. One

important outcome of this work was a new theory of propositions. Traditional

views in logic had held that the logical import of propositions is defined

wholly by their syntactical form (e.g., All As are Bs, Some Bs are Cs). In

contrast, Dewey maintained that statements of identical propositional form

can play significantly different functional roles in the process of inquiry.Thus in keeping with his distinction between the factual and conceptual

elements of inquiry, he replaced the accepted distinctions between universal,

particular, and singular propositions based on syntactical meaning with a

distinction between existential and ideational propositions, a distinction that

largely cuts across traditional classifications. The same general approach is


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taken throughout the work: the aim is to offer functional analyses of logical

principles and techniques that exhibit their operative utility in the process

of inquiry as Dewey understood it.

The breadth of topics treated and the depth and continuity of the

discussion of these topics mark theLogic as Deweys decisive statement inlogical theory. The recognition of the works importance within the

philosophical community of the time can be gauged by the fact that the

Journal of Philosophy, the most prominent American journal in the field,

dedicated an entire issue to a discussion of the work, including contributions

by such philosophical luminaries as C. I. Lewis of Harvard University, and

Ernest Nagel, Deweys colleague at Columbia University. Although many of

his critics did question, and continue to question, the assumptions of his

approach, one that is certainly unique in the development of twentieth

century logical theory, there is no doubt that the work was and continues tobe an important contribution to the field.

3. Metaphysics

Deweys naturalistic metaphysics first took shape in articles that he wrote

during the decade after the publication of Studies in Logical Theory, a

period when he was attempting to elucidate the implications of

instrumentalism. Dewey disagreed with William Jamess assessment that

pragmatic principles were metaphysically neutral. (He discusses this

disagreement in What Does Pragmatism Mean by Practical, published in

1908.) Deweys view was based in part on an assessment of the motivations

behind traditional metaphysics: a central aim of the metaphysical tradition

had been the discovery of an immutable cognitive object that could serve as

a foundation for knowledge. The pragmatic theory, by showing that

knowledge is a product of an activity directed to the fulfillment of human

purposes, and that a true (or warranted) belief is known to be such by the

consequences of its employment rather than by any psychological or

ontological foundations, rendered this longstanding aim of metaphysics, in

Deweys view, moot, and opened the door to renewed metaphysical discussion

grounded firmly on an empirical basis.

Dewey begins to define the general form that an empiricalmetaphysics should take in a number of articles, including The Postulate of

Immediate Empiricism (1905) and Does Reality Possess Practical

Character? (1908). In the former article, Dewey asserts that things

experienced empirically are what they are experienced as. Dewey uses as

an example a noise heard in a darkened room that is initially experienced as


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fearsome. Subsequent inquiry (e.g., turning on the lights and looking about)

reveals that the noise was caused by a shade tapping against a window, and

thus innocuous. But the subsequent inquiry, Dewey argues, does not change

the initial status of the noise: it was experienced as fearsome, and in fact

was fearsome. The point stems from the naturalistic roots of Deweys logic.Our experience of the world is constituted by our interrelationship with it, a

relationship that is imbued with practical import. The initial fearsomeness of

the noise is the experiential correlate of the uncertain, problematic

character of the situation, an uncertainty that is not merely subjective or

mental, but a product of the potential inadequacy of previously established

modes of behavior to deal effectively with the pragmatic demands of

present circumstances. The subsequent inquiry does not, therefore, uncover

a reality (the innocuousness of the noise) underlying a mere appearance (its

fearsomeness), but by settling the demands of the situation, it effects achange in the inter-dynamics of the organism-environment relationship of

the initial situationa change in reality.

There are two important implications of this line of thought that

distinguish it from the metaphysical tradition. First, although inquiry is

aimed at resolving the precarious and confusing aspects of experience to

provide a stable basis for action, this does not imply the unreality of the

unstable and contingent, nor justify its relegation to the status of mere

appearance. Thus, for example, the usefulness and reliability of utilizing

certain stable features of things encountered in our experience as a basis

for classification does not justify according ultimate reality to essences or

Platonic forms any more than, as rationalist metaphysicians in the modern

era have thought, the similar usefulness of mathematical reasoning in

understanding natural processes justifies the conclusion that the world can

be exhaustively defined mathematically.

Second, the fact that the meanings we attribute to natural events

might change in any particular in the future as renewed inquiries lead to

more adequate understandings of natural events (as was implied by Deweys

fallibilism) does not entail that our experience of the world at any given time

may as a whole be errant. Thus the implicit skepticism that underlies therepresentational theory of ideas and raises questions concerning the

veracity of perceptual experience as such is unwarranted. Dewey stresses

the point that sensations, hypotheses, ideas, etc., come into play to mediate

our encounter with the world only in the context of active inquiry. Once

inquiry is successful in resolving a problematic situation, mediatory


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sensations and ideas, as Dewey says, drop out; and things are present to the

agent in the most naively realistic fashion.

These contentions positioned Deweys metaphysics within the

territory of a naive realism, and in a number of his articles, such as The

Realism of Pragmatism (1905), Brief Studies in Realism (1911), and TheExistence of the World as a Logical Problem (1915), it is this view that

Dewey expressly avows (a view that he carefully distinguishes from what he

calls presentational realism, which he attributes to a number of the other

realists of his day). Opposing narrow-minded positions that would accord full

ontological status only to certain, typically the most stable or reliable,

aspects of experience, Dewey argues for a position that recognizes the real

significance of the multifarious richness of human experience.

Dewey offered a fuller statement of his metaphysics in 1925, with the

publication of one of his most significant philosophical works, Experience andNature. In the introductory chapter, Dewey stresses a familiar theme from

his earlier writings: that previous metaphysicians, guided by unavowed biases

for those aspects of experience that are relatively stable and secure, have

illicitly reified these biases into narrow ontological presumptions, such as

the temporal identity of substance, or the ultimate reality of forms or

essences. Dewey finds this procedure so pervasive in the history of thought

that he calls it simplythe philosophic fallacy, and signals his intention to

eschew the disastrous consequences of this approach by offering a

descriptive account of all of the various generic features of human

experience, whatever their character.

Dewey begins with the observation that the world as we experience it

both individually and collectively is an admixture of the precarious, the

transitory and contingent aspect of things, and the stable, the patterned

regularity of natural processes that allows for prediction and human

intervention. Honest metaphysical description must take into account both

of these elements of experience. Dewey endeavors to do this by an event

ontology. The world, rather than being comprised of things or, in more

traditional terms, substances, is comprised of happenings or occurrences

that admit of both episodic uniqueness and general, structured order.Intrinsically events have an ineffable qualitative character by which they

are immediately enjoyed or suffered, thus providing the basis for

experienced value and aesthetic appreciation. Extrinsically events are

connected to one another by patterns of change and development; any given

event arises out of determinant prior conditions and leads to probable


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consequences. The patterns of these temporal processes is the proper

subject matter of human knowledgewe know the world in terms of causal

laws and mathematical relationshipsbut the instrumental value of

understanding and controlling them should not blind us to the immediate,

qualitative aspect of events; indeed, the value of scientific understanding ismost significantly realized in the facility it affords for controlling the

circumstances under which immediate enjoyments may be realized.

It is in terms of the distinction between qualitative immediacy and the

structured order of events that Dewey understands the general pattern of

human life and action. This understanding is captured by James suggestive

metaphor that human experience consists of an alternation of flights and

perchings, an alternation of concentrated effort directed toward the

achievement of foreseen aims, what Dewey calls ends-in-view, with the

fruition of effort in the immediate satisfaction of consummatoryexperience. Deweys insistence that human life follows the patterns of

nature, as a part of nature, is the core tenet of his naturalistic outlook.

Dewey also addresses the social aspect of human experience facilitated by

symbolic activity, particularly that of language. For Dewey the question of

the nature of social relationships is a significant matter not only for social

theory, but metaphysics as well, for it is from collective human activity, and

specifically the development of shared meanings that govern this activity,

that the mind arises. Thus rather than understanding the mind as a primitive

and individual human endowment, and a precondition of conscious and

intentional action, as was typical in the philosophical tradition since

Descartes, Dewey offers a genetic analysis of mind as an emerging aspect of

cooperative activity mediated by linguistic communication. Consciousness, in

turn, is not to be understood as a domain of private awareness, but rather as

the fulcrum point of the organisms readjustment to the challenge of novel

conditions where the meanings and attitudes that formulate habitual

behavioral responses to the environment fail to be adequate. Thus Dewey

offers in the better part of a number of chapters of Experience and Nature

a response to the traditional mind-body problem of the metaphysical

tradition, a response that understands the mind as an emergent issue ofnatural processes, more particularly the web of interactive relationships

between human beings and the world in which they live.

4. Ethical and Social Theory

Deweys mature thought in ethics and social theory is not only intimately

linked to the theory of knowledge in its founding conceptual framework and


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naturalistic standpoint, but also complementary to it in its emphasis on the

social dimension of inquiry both in its processes and its consequences. In

fact, it would be reasonable to claim that Deweys theory of inquiry cannot

be fully understood either in the meaning of its central tenets or the

significance of its originality without considering how it applies to social aimsand values, the central concern of his ethical and social theory.

Dewey rejected the atomistic understanding of society of the Hobbesian

social contract theory, according to which the social, cooperative aspect of

human life was grounded in the logically prior and fully articulated rational

interests of individuals. Deweys claim in Experience and Nature that the

collection of meanings that constitute the mind have a social origin

expresses the basic contention, one that he maintained throughout his

career, that the human individual is a social being from the start, and that

individual satisfaction and achievement can be realized only within thecontext of social habits and institutions that promote it.

Moral and social problems, for Dewey, are concerned with the guidance of

human action to the achievement of socially defined ends that are

productive of a satisfying life for individuals within the social context.

Regarding the nature of what constitutes a satisfying life, Dewey was

intentionally vague, out of his conviction that specific ends or goods can be

defined only in particular socio-historical contexts. In theEthics (1932) he

speaks of the ends simply as the cultivation of interests in goods that

recommend themselves in the light of calm reflection. In other works, such

as Human Nature and Conduct and Art as Experience, he speaks of (1) the

harmonizing of experience (the resolution of conflicts of habit and interest

both within the individual and within society), (2) the release from tedium in

favor of the enjoyment of variety and creative action, and (3) the expansion

of meaning (the enrichment of the individuals appreciation of his or her

circumstances within human culture and the world at large). The attunement

of individual efforts to the promotion of these social ends constitutes, for

Dewey, the central issue of ethical concern of the individual; the collective

means for their realization is the paramount question of political policy.

Conceived in this manner, the appropriate method for solving moral andsocial questions is the same as that required for solving questions concerning

matters of fact: an empirical method that is tied to an examination of

problematic situations, the gathering of relevant facts, and the imaginative

consideration of possible solutions that, when utilized, bring about a

reconstruction and resolution of the original situations. Dewey, throughout


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his ethical and social writings, stressed the need for an open-ended, flexible,

and experimental approach to problems of practice aimed at the

determination of the conditions for the attainment of human goods and a

critical examination of the consequences of means adopted to promote them,

an approach that he called the method of intelligence.The central focus of Deweys criticism of the tradition of ethical thought is

its tendency to seek solutions to moral and social problems in dogmatic

principles and simplistic criteria which in his view were incapable of dealing

effectively with the changing requirements of human events. In

Reconstruction of Philosophyand The Quest for Certainty, Dewey located

the motivation of traditional dogmatic approaches in philosophy in the

forlorn hope for security in an uncertain world, forlorn because the

conservatism of these approaches has the effect of inhibiting the intelligent

adaptation of human practice to the ineluctable changes in the physical andsocial environment. Ideals and values must be evaluated with respect to

their social consequences, either as inhibitors or as valuable instruments for

social progress, and Dewey argues that philosophy, because of the breadth

of its concern and its critical approach, can play a crucial role in this

evaluation.

In large part, then, Deweys ideas in ethics and social theory were

programmatic rather than substantive, defining the direction that he

believed human thought and action must take in order to identify the

conditions that promote the human good in its fullest sense, rather than

specifying particular formulae or principles for individual and social action.

He studiously avoided participating in what he regarded as the unfortunate

practice of previous moral philosophers of offering general rules that

legislate universal standards of conduct. But there are strong suggestions in

a number of his works of basic ethical and social positions. In Human Nature

and Conduct Dewey approaches ethical inquiry through an analysis of human

character informed by the principles of scientific psychology. The analysis is

reminiscent of Aristotelian ethics, concentrating on the central role of habit

in formulating the dispositions of action that comprise character, and the

importance of reflective intelligence as a means of modifying habits andcontrolling disruptive desires and impulses in the pursuit of worthwhile ends.

The social condition for the flexible adaptation that Dewey believed was

crucial for human advancement is a democratic form of life, not instituted

merely by democratic forms of governance, but by the inculcation of

democratic habits of cooperation and public spiritedness, productive of an


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organized, self-conscious community of individuals responding to societys

needs by experimental and inventive, rather than dogmatic, means. The

development of these democratic habits, Dewey argues in School and

SocietyandDemocracy and Education, must begin in the earliest years of a

childs educational experience. Dewey rejected the notion that a childseducation should be viewed as merely a preparation for civil life, during

which disjoint facts and ideas are conveyed by the teacher and memorized

by the student only to be utilized later on. The school should rather be

viewed as an extension of civil society and continuous with it, and the

student encouraged to operate as a member of a community, actively

pursuing interests in cooperation with others. It is by a process of self-

directed learning, guided by the cultural resources provided by teachers,

that Dewey believed a child is best prepared for the demands of responsible

membership within the democratic community.5. Aesthetics

Deweys one significant treatment of aesthetic theory is offered in Art as

Experience, a book that was based on the William James Lectures that he

delivered at Harvard University in 1931. The book stands out as a diversion

into uncommon philosophical territory for Dewey, adumbrated only by a

somewhat sketchy and tangential treatment of art in one chapter of

Experience and Nature. The unique status of the work in Deweys corpus

evoked some criticism from Deweys followers, most notably Stephen Pepper,

who believed that it marked an unfortunate departure from the naturalistic

standpoint of his instrumentalism, and a return to the idealistic viewpoints

of his youth. On close reading, however, Art as Experience reveals a

considerable continuity of Deweys views on art with the main themes of his

previous philosophical work, while offering an important and useful extension

of those themes. Dewey had always stressed the importance of recognizing

the significance and integrity of all aspects of human experience. His

repeated complaint against the partiality and bias of the philosophical

tradition expresses this theme. Consistent with this theme, Dewey took

account of qualitative immediacy in Experience and Nature, and incorporated

it into his view of the developmental nature of experience, for it is in theenjoyment of the immediacy of an integration and harmonization of

meanings, in the consummatory phase of experience that, in Deweys view,

the fruition of the re-adaptation of the individual with environment is

realized. These central themes are enriched and deepened in Art as

Experience, making it one of Deweys most significant works.


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The roots of aesthetic experience lie, Dewey argues, in commonplace

experience, in the consummatory experiences that are ubiquitous in the

course of human life. There is no legitimacy to the conceit cherished by

some art enthusiasts that aesthetic enjoyment is the privileged endowment

of the few. Whenever there is a coalesence into an immediately enjoyedqualitative unity of meanings and values drawn from previous experience and

present circumstances, life then takes on an aesthetic qualitywhat Dewey

called having an experience. Nor is the creative work of the artist, in its

broad parameters, unique. The process of intelligent use of materials and

the imaginative development of possible solutions to problems issuing in a

reconstruction of experience that affords immediate satisfaction, the

process found in the creative work of artists, is also to be found in all

intelligent and creative human activity. What distinguishes artistic creation

is the relative stress laid upon the immediate enjoyment of unifiedqualitative complexity as the rationalizing aim of the activity itself, and the

ability of the artist to achieve this aim by marshalling and refining the

massive resources of human life, meanings, and values.

The senses play a key role in artistic creation and aesthetic

appreciation. Dewey, however, argues against the view, stemming historically

from the sensationalistic empiricism of David Hume, that interprets the

content of sense experience simply in terms of the traditionally codified list

of sense qualities, such as color, odor, texture, etc., divorced from the

funded meanings of past experience. It is not only the sensible qualities

present in the physical media the artist uses, but the wealth of meaning that

attaches to these qualities, that constitute the material that is refined and

unified in the process of artistic expression. The artist concentrates,

clarifies, and vivifies these meanings in the artwork. The unifying element in

this process is emotionnot the emotion of raw passion and outburst, but

emotion that is reflected upon and used as a guide to the overall character

of the artwork. Although Dewey insisted that emotion is not the significant

content of the work of art, he clearly understands it to be the crucial tool

of the artists creative activity.

Dewey repeatedly returns in Art as Experience to a familiar theme ofhis critical reflections upon the history of ideas, namely that a distinction

too strongly drawn too often sacrifices accuracy of account for a misguided

simplicity. Two applications of this theme are worth mentioning here. Dewey

rejects the sharp distinction often made in aesthetics between the matter

and the form of an artwork. What Dewey objected to was the implicit


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suggestion that matter and form stand side by side, as it were, in the

artwork as distinct and precisely distinguishable elements. For Dewey, form

is better understood in a dynamic sense as the coordination and adjustment

of the qualities and associated meanings that are integrated within the

artwork.A second misguided distinction that Dewey rejects is that between

the artist as the active creator and the audience as the passive recipient of

art. This distinction artificially truncates the artistic process by in effect

suggesting that the process ends with the final artifact of the artists

creativity. Dewey argues that, to the contrary, the process is barren

without the agency of the appreciator, whose active assimilation of the

artists work requires a recapitulation of many of the same processes of

discrimination, comparison, and integration that are present in the artists

initial work, but now guided by the artists perception and skill. Deweyunderscores the point by distinguishing between the art product, the

painting, sculpture, etc., created by the artist, and the work of art proper,

which is only realized through the active engagement of an astute audience.

Ever concerned with the interrelationships between the various domains of

human activity and concern, Dewey ends Art as Experience with a chapter

devoted to the social implications of the arts. Art is a product of culture,

and it is through art that the people of a given culture express the

significance of their lives, as well as their hopes and ideals. Because art has

its roots in the consummatory values experienced in the course of human

life, its values have an affinity to commonplace values, an affinity that

accords to art a critical office in relation to prevailing social conditions.

Insofar as the possibility for a meaningful and satisfying life disclosed in

the values embodied in art is not realized in the lives of the members of a

society, the social relationships that preclude this realization are

condemned. Deweys specific target in this chapter was the conditions of

workers in industrialized society, conditions which force upon the worker

the performance of repetitive tasks that are devoid of personal interest and

afford no satisfaction in personal accomplishment. The degree to which this

critical function of art is ignored is a further indication of what Deweyregarded as the unfortunate distancing of the arts from the common

pursuits and interests of ordinary life. The realization of arts social

function requires the closure of this bifurcation.

6. Critical Reception and Influence


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Deweys philosophical work received varied responses from his philosophical

colleagues during his lifetime. There were many philosophers who saw his

work, as Dewey himself understood it, as a genuine attempt to apply the

principles of an empirical naturalism to the perennial questions of philosophy,

providing a beneficial clarification of issues and the concepts used toaddress them. Deweys critics, however, often expressed the opinion that his

views were more confusing than clarifying, and that they appeared to be

more akin to idealism than the scientifically based naturalism Dewey

expressly avowed. Notable in this connection are Deweys disputes

concerning the relation of the knowing subject to known objects with the

realists Bertrand Russell, A. O. Lovejoy, and Evander Bradley McGilvery.

Whereas these philosophers argued that the object of knowledge must be

understood as existing apart from the knowing subject, setting the truth

conditions for propositions, Dewey defended the view that thingsunderstood as isolated from any relationship with the human organism could

not be objects of knowledge at all.

Dewey was sensitive and responsive to the criticisms brought against

his views. He often attributed them to misinterpretations based on the

traditional, philosophical connotations that some of his readers would attach

to his terminology. This was clearly a fair assessment with respect to some

of his critics. To take one example, Dewey used the term experience,

found throughout his philosophical writings, to denote the broad context of

the human organisms interrelationship with its environment, not the domain

of human thought alone, as some of his critics read him to mean. Deweys

concern for clarity of expression motivated efforts in his later writings to

revise his terminology. Thus, for example, he later substituted transaction

for his earlier interaction to denote the relationship between organism and

environment, since the former better suggested a dynamic interdependence

between the two, and in a new introduction to Experience and Nature, never

published during his lifetime, he offered the term culture as an alternative

to experience. Late in his career he attempted a more sweeping revision of

philosophical terminology in Knowing and the Known, written in collaboration

with Arthur F. Bentley.The influence of Deweys work, along with that of the pragmatic

school of thought itself, although considerable in the first few decades of

the twentieth century, was gradually eclipsed during the middle part of the

century as other philosophical methods, such as those of the analytic school

in England and America and phenomenology in continental Europe, grew to


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ascendency. Recent trends in philosophy, however, leading to the dissolution

of these rigid paradigms, have led to approaches that continue and expand

on the themes of Deweys work. W. V. O. Quines project of naturalizing

epistemology works upon naturalistic presumptions anticipated in Deweys

own naturalistic theory of inquiry. The social dimension and function ofbelief systems, explored by Dewey and other pragmatists, has received

renewed attention by such writers as Richard Rorty and Jrgen Habermas.

American phenomenologists such as Sandra Rosenthal and James Edie have

considered the affinities of phenomenology and pragmatism, and Hilary

Putnam, an analytically trained philosophy, has recently acknowledged the

affinity of his own approach to ethics to that of Deweys. The renewed

openness and pluralism of recent philosophical discussion has meant a

renewed interest in Deweys philosophy, an interest that promises to

continue for some time to come.

7. References and Further Reading

a. Primary Sources

All of the published writings of John Dewey have been newly edited and

published in The Collected Works of John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, ed., 37

volumes (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967-1991).

Deweys complete correspondence has know been published in electronic

form in The Correspondence of John Dewey, 3 vols., Larry Hickman, ed.

(Charlottesville, Va: Intelex Corporation).

An authoritative collection of Deweys writings is The Essential Dewey, 2

vols., Larry Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander, eds. (Bloomington, IN:

Indiana University Press, 1998).

b. Secondary Sources

Alexander, Thomas M. The Horizons of Feeling: John Deweys Theoryof Art, Experience, and Nature.Albany: State University of New York

Press, 1987.

Boisvert, Raymond D. Deweys Metaphysics. New York: FordhamUniversity Press, 1988.

Boisvert, Raymond D. John Dewey: Rethinking Our Time. Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press, 1998.

Bullert, Gary. The Politics of John Dewey. Buffalo, NY: PrometheusBooks, 1983.

Campbell, James. Understanding John Dewey: Nature and CooperativeIntelligence. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1995.


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Damico, Alfonso J. Individuality and Community: The Social andPolitical Thought of John Dewey.Gainesville, FL: University Presses of

Florida, 1978.

Dykhuizen, George. The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale:Southern Illinois University Press, 1973.

Eames, S. Morris. Experience and Value: Essays on John Dewey andPragmatic Naturalism.Elizabeth R. Eames and Richard W. Field, eds.

Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003.

Eldridge, Michael. Transforming Experience: John Deweys CulturalInstrumentalism. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998.

Gouinlock, James. John Deweys Philosophy of Value. New York:Humanities Press, 1972.

Hickman, Larry. John Deweys Pragmatic Technology. Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1990.

Hickman, Larry A., ed. Reading Dewey: Interpretations for aPostmodern Generation. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana

University Press, 1998.

Hook, Sidney. John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait. New York: JohnDay Co., 1939; New York: Prometheus Books, 1995.

Jackson, Philip W. John Dewey and the Lessons of Art. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1998.

Haskins, Casey and David I. Seiple, eds. Dewey Reconfigured: Essayson Deweyan Pragmatism.Albany: State University of New York Press,

1999.

Levine, Barbara. Works about John Dewey: 1886-1995. Carbondale andEdwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.

Rockefeller, Steven C. John Dewey: Religious Faith and DemocraticHumanism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Schilpp, Paul Arthur and Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds. The Philosophy ofJohn Dewey, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 1. La Salle, IL:

Open Court, 1989.

Sleeper, Ralph. The Necessity of Pragmatism: John DeweysConception of Philosophy. New York: Yale University Press, 1987.

Thayer, H. S. The Logic of Pragmatism: An Examination of JohnDeweys Logic. New York: Humanities Press, 1952.

Tiles, J. E. Dewey. London: Routledge, 1988. Welchman, Jennifer. Deweys Ethical Thought. Ithaca: Cornell

University Press, 1995.

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